‘You like flowers, though, don’t you?’ Leanne pointed out with false joviality. Maybe she should post an advert in the window and see what came of it. That was how Stevie had found Cassandra. Leanne wanted a Cassandra of her own – instead, she appeared to have landed herself with a reluctant pensioner.
‘I’m not as young as I used to be,’ Mabel insisted, still chewing on her bottom lip.
‘You mightn’t be,’ Leanne countered, ‘but you are a mature, sensible woman and I have every confidence that you can do this. You’ll soon pick it up,’ she added, more for her own benefit than Mabel’s. ‘Let me show you where everything is, I’ll talk you through a typical day, then we’ll have a cuppa. How does that sound?’
‘OK.’ Mabel’s reluctance was tangible.
Leanne flicked a switch on the kettle and began to show the other woman around as they waited for it to boil.
‘Let’s see what you know and what you don’t know, and we can take it from there,’ she suggested, suppressing a sigh at Mabel’s unwilling nod. She felt like saying, ‘You don’t have to do this,’ but she reined herself in. She had a feeling Mabel did have to do this, both for financial reasons and to give her a purpose in life. On more than one occasion, Ken had mentioned that his wife had lost some of her get-up-and-go since she’d retired.
‘You know what these are, don’t you?’ Leanne asked, pointing to a bucket of roses.
‘Roses,’ Mabel replied promptly. ‘These are lilies, them there are chrysanthemums, and they’re daffs…’ She trailed off uncertainly.
‘That’s right! See, you do know your flowers.’ Leanne was trying to be encouraging, but she was worried she was beginning to sound patronising.
Mabel looked slowly around the shop, nodding to herself. ‘I recognise most of them,’ she admitted reluctantly.
Over the course of the next hour or so, aided by two cups of strong tea and some digestive biscuits, Leanne saw a little confidence creeping into the older woman’s face.
‘I can’t put them together in a bouquet, mind,’ Mabel warned.
‘You won’t have to,’ Leanne told her. ‘I’ll prepare the orders in the morning, and Ken knows what’s what with the deliveries. All you need to do is man the shop and deal with the customers.’
‘But what if they ask me something and I don’t know the answer?’ Mabel said, looking worried again.
‘I’m not going to leave you totally on your own just yet, and when I do, it will only be for a day. Even then, my mother’s on the other end of the phone.’
Despite the distance, Leanne planned to get up super-early on the day of the interview to drive to London, so that she could drive back the same evening. Surely Mabel could manage for a day?
The door opened and both women looked towards it, Leanne with a friendly, professional smile, Mabel with alarm on her face.
‘It’s only Stevie,’ Leanne said.
‘Thanks.’ Stevie’s voice was dry, but she was smiling.
‘I mean, it’s nothing for Mabel to be worried about,’ Leanne said. She turned to Mabel. ‘Stevie calls every other morning for fifteen flowers, one for each of her tables. Small flowers are better because they don’t take up as much room. How about narcissi?’ she asked Stevie.
‘Perfect.’ Stevie grinned as Leanne encouraged Mabel to pick out the required number of flowers and demonstrated how to wrap them.
Mabel handed the bunch to Stevie, then looked at Leanne for further instructions.
‘Normally I’d tot up how much the customer is to pay,’ Leanne explained, ‘but Stevie has an account, so I just note it down in this book.’ She showed Mabel the account book, then pulled a diary from under the counter. ‘Orders go in this one here, everything from birthday bouquets to full-blown weddings. Have a look through and you’ll see the sort of details I need.’
She left Mabel to it and walked Stevie to the door.
‘How’s she doing?’ Stevie whispered. Leanne had confided in her friend about the competition but had asked Stevie to keep it to herself – she didn’t want the whole village to know, just in case she didn’t make it past the interview stage.
She pursed her lips. ‘It’s early days yet. She only started this morning, but I’m sure she’ll be fine. She’ll have to be, otherwise I’m never going to get to London.’
When the next customer came in, she showed Mabel how to work the till. ‘You put the amount in here,’ she said, pressing some buttons, ‘and if the customer purchases more than one item, press the plus button and enter the new amount. When you’re done, press this one here and it will total it up for you.’
Mabel didn’t say a single word, and Leanne wondered if she had understood anything she had just said.
‘Oh! The till roll has run out.’ Worried that this new development might scare Mabel even further, she hastened to change it. Her surprise when the older woman proceeded to expertly flip open the holder, take the old till roll out and insert a fresh one was quite considerable. She closed her mouth abruptly, realising it was hanging open.
‘Now this bit I can do,’ Mabel said. ‘Back in the day, I did a stint in a supermarket. That was before I joined Webbs.’
‘What did you do at Webbs?’ Leanne asked.
‘I was the logistics manager.’
Webbs was an engineering firm in nearby Abergavenny, and although Leanne vaguely remembered hearing something about Mabel working for them (Tanglewood was a small place, and people generally knew what other folks were up to), she’d assumed she must have been employed on the factory floor. Once again she felt her mouth drop open.
That would teach her to make assumptions, she thought.
‘Tills I can handle,’ Mabel continued. ‘Getting goods from A to B I can handle. But this,’ she gestured around the shop, ‘is totally new.’
‘You’ll soon get the hang of it,’ Leanne repeated, meaning it this time. ‘If you can run a big department in a company like Webbs, you can surely sell a couple of bunches of flowers.’
Mabel still looked dubious.
‘How about you stick to what you’re comfortable with and I’ll sort out anything more complicated until you feel you’re ready?’ Leanne suggested. ‘What do you say?’
Mabel held out her right hand. ‘Agreed, but I’m not as young as I used to be; it might take me a bit longer to catch on,’ she warned yet again.
Leanne took her hand and shook it. ‘Welcome aboard,’ she said, a flutter of excitement shooting through her.
Oh boy, London and the interview had suddenly become very real indeed.
Chapter 7
Nell squirmed inside Rex’s jacket, her little paws scrabbling against the material.
‘Not yet, young lady,’ he told her. ‘You can walk as soon as you’ve had your next lot of injections.’
In fact, that was exactly where he would be taking her in a couple of hours. But first he intended to call into the office to catch up on some paperwork.
‘Ooh, what a cutie,’ one of the admin staff cried, spotting the puppy’s black and white head poking out from Rex’s waterproof jacket.
‘Aye, she is bonny,’ he agreed. ‘She’s also a right wee madam when she puts her mind to it.’
The woman grinned at him. ‘Just like all us ladies, eh? How old is she?’
‘Ten weeks.’ Rex shrugged his rucksack off his shoulders and brought out the dog’s bowls, some toys, a blanket and a puppy training pad. He caught the woman watching him.
‘I should imagine this is what it must be like taking a baby out,’ he joked, placing the pup on the floor. Nell stood there uncertainly, nose twitching and tail quivering at the strangeness of the new surroundings.
‘Believe me, kids are a lot worse,’ the woman said. She bent down and made clicking noises with her tongue. Nell plucked up courage and padded towards her, tail going nineteen to the dozen. The woman giggled as the puppy licked her fingers. ‘I should know, I’ve had three kids and I’ve got a couple of grandchildren too. When they�
�re little, every time you step out of the door you feel as though you’re taking your whole house with you.’
Rex decided he should buy another couple of bowls and other stuff to keep in the office to save carting everything around with him. He could keep some things in the Land Rover too, just in case.
He switched the computer on while trying to keep an eye on the dog. Although Nell seemed to be getting to grips with house training in the cottage, sometimes she forgot herself and widdled where she stood. He usually managed to anticipate her more substantial accidents though, because she tended to run around in frantic circles as if she couldn’t decide on a suitable spot. He’d also noticed she tended to go not long after being fed, which helped to minimise the incidents.
Still, he kept a close eye on her all the same, because she had a tendency to chew anything that took her fancy, and there didn’t appear to be any consistency in her choices. Puppies chewed shoes – everyone knew that – and he’d been prepared to have to move every pair he owned out of her reach. He vividly remembered his dismay when he’d caught Star eating his one and only pair of football boots. By the time he’d realised what she’d done, there hadn’t been much left of them except for the studs and the laces.
Nell liked shoes. She really liked shoes. She also really liked telephone wires, skirting boards, chair legs and anything else she could sink her sharp teeth into. Except, that is, the things he had purposely bought for her to chew on, which she ignored completely. So far, not one of the toys, balls or assorted chews he had purchased had caught her fancy.
After logging on to his emails and taking several minutes to read and answer each one because he kept having to jump up to either wrestle something out of the pup’s mouth or remove her from whatever she was trying to destroy, he gave up.
Instead, he decided to check on how the repairs to one of the main hiking paths leading up to the main peak were going. Maybe some fresh air would wear the little tyke out.
The drive was a short one and he zipped the puppy into his jacket once more as he got out of his vehicle, leaving his hands free to lock the Land Rover. Being a ranger meant he had access to parts of the park where the general public’s vehicles weren’t allowed, and he’d driven as far up the track as he could before pulling over, leaving the Landy slightly skewed up a bank. Normally he’d hike up the track from the bottom, but he was conscious of not wanting to be late for Nell’s injections.
He did take a moment to gaze at the view, though. Tanglewood lay directly below him, shining in the bright morning sunlight. From up here, it looked even more picture-postcard lovely, if that was possible, nestling in its wide valley with the river winding through it, and surrounded by trees, open fields and hedgerows. Beyond that lay the moors and the mountaintops. He took a deep breath of fresh, chilly air, thinking how lucky he was to live in such a beautiful, unspoilt part of the country.
The drone of a helicopter overhead shattered the peace, and he glanced up, smiling with satisfaction when he saw the payload of rocks dangling beneath it, destined to be dropped at some point further up the path.
There was a fine balance between protecting and conserving the National Park and allowing access to the countless pairs of feet that hiked the trails criss-crossing the mountains. That was where Rex, the other park rangers and the teams of volunteers came in. Today, some of them were laying stones over what was essentially a dirt track to try to reduce the erosion caused by the thousands of hikers, cyclists and walkers who visited the park every year. It took a lot of work to lay those stones, plus a great deal of organisation.
The only way to ferry a couple of tons of rock up a mountainside was by air, and several huge bags of blocks had already been placed at intervals along this particular path. Rex knew the copter would make several more flights today, if the weather held.
‘Wake up, you,’ he said to the puppy, who had fallen asleep in his jacket. A snuffle was her only response. Typical – she was fast asleep now, exactly when he didn’t want her to be, which meant she’d be wide awake later when he was trying to eat lunch or do some paperwork.
Resigned to letting her sleep, he continued up the mountain until he reached the volunteers. There were four of them today, three of whom he’d met previously.
‘How’s it going?’ he asked, after greetings and the inevitable cooing over the sleeping pup had been dispensed with.
‘Grand,’ one of the men replied. ‘We’ve done about ten feet today. Hopefully we’ll get another ten done before we finish.’
It was slow, back-breaking work, but essential to the health and well-being of the park, and Rex stopped to help for a while, taking his jacket off and placing it carefully in the heather with the pup still cocooned inside.
After an hour or so, he shared his flask of coffee with the volunteers and handed around a bag of doughnuts that he’d picked up from the bakery on the way, before heading back down the mountain thinking about the rest of his busy day. After Nell’s visit to the vet, he was due to speak at a local primary school, and as he strode down the hill, an idea began to form.
It was all well and good telling the children about the importance of conservation in the park, but wouldn’t it be better to show them? He didn’t mean a series of PowerPoint slides, either. Maybe he could suggest to their teacher that they visit one of the more easily accessible places and do some painting. They could make a day of it, with Rex supplying the picnic (what did eight- and nine-year-olds eat? he wondered) and the art materials. The kids would get some exercise and fresh air, and have a chance to learn something new. At this time of year, there were tadpoles in the streams, new lambs frolicking on the hillsides and hundreds of nesting birds, as well as the lizards and grass snakes just coming out of hibernation. If they were really lucky, they might even get to see a slow-worm or a fox.
He wondered whether the paintings could be auctioned off, with half the proceeds going to the school and the other half to the National Park. Hoping his manager and the school would like the idea, he put the now wide-awake Nell into her travelling crate and drove to the vet, thankful that in a couple of weeks’ time the dog could be released from the confines of his jacket and walk beside him on her lead.
She was an absolute sweetheart as she was given her injection, only whimpering once, and as a treat he decided to take her to Peggy’s Tea Shoppe for a spot of well-earned lunch.
He had his head down, concentrating on the little bundle snuggled against his chest, as he walked along the high street, so he wasn’t aware of the person coming in the opposite direction until they bumped shoulders.
‘Oops! Sorry,’ a female voice said.
He looked down to see someone laughing into his chest. The young woman wasn’t looking at him because she was too busy focusing on Nell, but he recognised her at once. Leanne, wasn’t it? From the farm where he’d bought Nell.
‘My, hasn’t she grown!’ she exclaimed, and he could see she was itching for a closer look at the dog.
He unzipped his jacket and handed the pup over. Nell whined ecstatically.
‘She remembers me!’ Leanne cried with delight.
‘Of course she does. She’s a bright little girl.’ He watched as Leanne bent over the dog’s furry head, and he knew she was inhaling the irresistible puppy smell.
‘How’s she doing?’ she asked.
‘She’s really good. She’s just had her second lot of injections today, and the house training is coming on a treat.’
‘There’s a good girl,’ Leanne crooned, and for a second Rex thought he saw tears in her eyes.
It must be hard for her, he realised, to have a litter of puppies on the farm and not be able to keep the one she had clearly so closely bonded with. On impulse, he said, ‘I’m going to grab a spot of lunch at Peggy’s. Would you like to join me?’
He noticed her hesitation, and added, ‘Only if you want to. I just thought you might like to spend a bit of time with Nell.’
‘Oh, I do. It’s just that Mabel, my n
ew assistant, is on her own in the shop and I said I wouldn’t be long.’ She paused. ‘Oh, why not? She’ll be on her own for a whole day soon, so it won’t hurt for her to get some practice in.’
‘You own a shop?’ he asked as they started down the high street towards Peggy’s.
‘Yes, the flower shop around the corner.’
He could see her as the flowery type, dressed as she was in a blouse with leaves all over it. A bright pink anorak and a pair of slim-fitting jeans completed the picture.
He opened the door and gestured for her to enter, catching a glimpse of her pert, rounded bum as he did so. Hastily he cleared his throat and followed her to an empty table, carefully averting his eyes. She was certainly cute, but he wasn’t in the market for a relationship. Luckily she hadn’t caught him checking her out.
‘Look what I’ve got,’ she sang, and Stevie hurried over. As they oohed and aahed over the little dog, Rex couldn’t help staring at Leanne again.
With her upturned nose, brown eyes and ready wide smile, she was really pretty. He also had a feeling she’d be fun to be with and easy to talk to. He watched as she tossed her thick brown hair out of her face. It curled down to her shoulders and he had a sudden urge to run his fingers through it. Drawing his mouth into a firm line, he wondered where on earth that impulse had come from.
When Stevie finally remembered she had a tea shop to run and asked Rex what he wanted, his eyes were firmly on the menu.
‘What’s it like owning your own business?’ he asked once Stevie had taken their order and Leanne finally sat down, the dog lying at her feet.
‘Hard work, satisfying, exciting and boring, all rolled into one,’ she said.
He cocked his head, encouraging her to go on.
‘The hard work goes without saying,’ she began, ‘and the satisfaction comes from a job well done. I love seeing the look on my customers’ faces when they pick up an arrangement I’ve made, or stop to look at the window display.’
The Tanglewood Flower Shop Page 4
